Our Lord’s Day morning started with the services of the Metro Tuguegarao congregation. Brother Flor, one of the elders was teaching the auditorium class and Rody followed with some comments on the text. We were studying Matthew 25 and they were using the workbook by Marc Gibson as a guide. There was good participation by the members with all of the discussion in the dialect.
In the assembly, I preached on “The GAIN in Gaining Christ” from Philippians 3:7-14. Paul counted his past life of attaining a high status in Judaism as “rubbish” that he might gain Christ. What did he count as gain in Christ? That he might (1) know Him, (2) know the power of His resurrection and (3) know the fellowship of His sufferings.
In the afternoon, Rody, Tessie and I all went to worship with the Alibago congregation. Rody has been preaching there at 2pm until just this month. Now, James Attaban has begun to work with them and will be preaching there regularly. The congregation is made up of mostly Itawit speakers and that is James’ native dialect. When I started to speak on “Reason for Spiritual Weakness,” a “brown-out” occurred where electricity is lost in a region for some time. Without use of my charts, I went back to old style preaching and just delivered the lesson. With no air or fans, the building quickly heated up to be extremely hot and I felt like I was about to melt. I gave a shortened version of the lesson and Rody gave a summary in the dialect. There were no visible responses today.
